No Regrets
by Kali Cephirot
Summary: Eru has come to understand the differences between mazoku and humans.


**No Regrets.**  
Mother has always said 'live each day to its fullest, no regrets'. At least as far as I can remember, every time something seems down, she smiles and then says that we should live each moment to its fullest. Even if it is something positive, when I was younger I always got confused as to why my usually cheerful mother would seem sad saying that, or why my father seemed to be in pain then.

I'm still young, I guess. Thirty years old for a half mazoku isn't much, and even more for me, who has maryoku and thus is – until this point – growing up as any other full blooded mazoku child. I still don't understand many things. I don't know why auntie Anissina teases uncle Gwendal so much, or why is it that father doesn't seem to like it when I go with Jiruta to ask him about his training or why does Adler _doesn't_ have maryouku when I do, or why does His Excellency uncle Wolfram and His Majesty uncle Yuuri seem to like fighting so much… but what I do know it's this.

My mother, Nicola, is going to die soon.

Not soon-tomorrow, I don't think. But soon for a half Mazoku. Sooner if you're a full blooded Mazoku. I can see it already in the wrinkles around her eyes that have formed from almost always smiling, of the lines around her mouth from laughing, or the strands of gray that have mixed with her hair.

Adler is barely fifteen years old. He doesn't understand it. That's why he asked why mother ages so fast. I remember asking the same question once, and even though mother and father both explained it to me, I didn't understand it for a while, just as I know how my brother didn't fully understand it. Yes, I understood that humans grew up faster than mazoku but that doesn't explain the fact that, growing faster, means getting older which means dying.

The same is happening with princess Greta. She's still young, younger than mother, but she is also growing up so fast. She's only ten years older than me, the same age Jiruta is, and Jiruta barely looks twenty in the way of humans, he's not considered an adult yet while princess Greta is already a mother, a wife and when she visits I play with her children the same way that she played with me when I was younger, but now she speaks with my mother for hours of things that I don't – can't - know.

And then there is me, and they don't know how I'm going to grow up. I'm half blooded but I've maryoku. I'm the first half mazoku who ever does. Adler, my brother, doesn't have any. He doesn't understand why I must live in Blood Pledge Castle and why can't I have the same classes he does in my grandparents villa. He hates that I live faraway and he can't understand that sometimes people can't stop living apart from each other.

I might outlive my maryoku-less younger brother. My father doesn't know if he's going to outlive my brother and me… and my father and I know that my mother is going to die in twenty, thirty years if we're lucky.

I'm not sure yet why any of this happens. I don't want my mother to die. If I age like a pureblood, in thirty years I'll barely be considered of age. If I start aging like a half blood, it still means that I'll have to wait other ten, fifteen years to be considered an adult. Who can tell if my mother has that much? The only old people I know are my grandparents, and they still have, probably, another sixty, seventy years of life. My father Huber still has at least other two hundred years. I know uncle Conrad – a half blood – will look old sooner than my father, even if he is so much younger.

It all scares me now. I didn't understand it then. I was happy with my pets, learning maryoku, trying to get away from auntie Anissina's lessons to go and explore. Five years ago the concept of 'death' was still foreign to me. I had my father, my mother, a younger brother and Shin Makoku was in peace. All of us children would play baseball with His Majesty uncle Yuuri every other day and father would, every time he could, take me out for a ride and tell me that _no,_ I couldn't have a Sand Bear, no matter if it was cute. 

We still do that (well, I asked if there was any chance that he'd allow me to have a couple of Goalas if I promised to keep them fed and he just Looked at me and then uncle Gwendal gave me a Goala plushie he had made so I would stop pouting) and the baseball is still happening (against Cabalcade in two months!) and there's going to be a party soon because Celi-sama is coming from her trip and when she comes back there's _always_ a party and still, nothing is the same because now I can see the way His Excellency uncle Wolfram and His Majesty uncle Yuuri look when talking about Greta, or how, sometimes, father looks at mother as if she would disappear.

And there's nothing I – that we - can do about all this, because sooner or later everyone dies, it's just that humans do it so much sooner than the rest of us and we'll all have to learn to cope with it, even if it hurts. I don't want to see my father sad after mother dies, I don't want to be sad when mother dies, but the only thing that all of us can do is what my mother says, the thing I'll always remember of her, even after years have passed of her death..

Live each day to its fullest, no regrets.


End file.
